


ghosts are simply shells of what we wish to forget

by astral_dreams



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Angst, But also, Character Study, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Mentioned Character Death, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Character Death, at some point i will write them happy, no beta we die like the original hepheastus crew, spoilers for the whole show, this is both kind of abstract and artsy and also a study of the characters psyche's, today is not that day
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:21:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29199018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astral_dreams/pseuds/astral_dreams
Summary: Small vignettes into the Crew of the USS Hephaestus and their ghosts.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	1. the sun shines when it is not seen

**Author's Note:**

> So it has been a while since I've done any sort of fanfiction and I wanted to do some small snippets of a character study about each of the characters. Starting with Hilbert since I've been dragged into Olga Volodin brainrot. Just a quick note that I am not Russian nor do I understand the intricacies of Russian endearments/diminutives. The internet said kotnoyok meant kitten and so. It is now a thing.
> 
> Enjoy ! (Eiffel will be the next chapter).

Ghosts are common on the Hephaestus. 

They lurk in the halls, in darkened corridors and long-forgotten files on long-abandoned computers. They live in useless bits of code, the banging and creaking in the middle of the night, the way the star glows when you’re all alone on shift. But mostly they live in the memory of the crew. 

Hilbert was the first to have ghosts, or maybe it was Eiffel. Both of them have regrets and mistakes that still haunt them, it would be hard to tell which. But it’s more than likely that Hilbert’s ghosts haunted the ship first.

After all, they were once alive on it too. But not always.

He’s in the medical bay, where he usually is stationed, when it happens. It’s happened before and it will happen again, but each time he is reminded of painful memories long since past. Expecting to hear the chatter of the other scientists, he is instead surprised when the laugh of a young girl makes him freeze in his tracks. It’s a weak laugh, damaged by sickness and a frail form, but it’s a laugh nonetheless. Fueled by the innocent joy that streaks across childhood memories, there is a sadness forming in the pit of Hilbert’s stomach that reaches all the way up to his heart, further immobilizing him.

“Mitya, why won’t you come play with me?” the young voice calls, strained and hopeful.

A pang is felt in Hilbert’s heart, something he thought he had long since taught himself to repress, and he feels like he might cry. In the moment he is not Hilbert anymore, nor is he Selberg, or any other name Goddard might’ve painted him with, he is simply Dmitri and his sister wants to play with him. 

“I wish I could, kotyonok. I have to work,” he started slowly, letting a long-forgotten endearment slip, brain already caught up in memories 

A loud groan could be heard, but he refused to look, back still turnt on the room. 

“You are  _ always _ working. Why can’t you take a break for once? Would that really kill you, Mitya?” 

The voice was small, as he had always remembered. She had always been so small, short for her age, even when she was years older than him. He could just imagine her asking him quietly to spend time with her, voice weak with the strain it took to speak, but eager nonetheless. She would spend most of her days curled up and weak, shivering and disgruntled, the hair she still had left standing up on its edges. The worker had said she looked like a sick kitten, and so Dmitri had started pitying her and spending what time he could with her. Everyone commented that he looked like a protective older brother, even though she was 2 years his senior. 

He regarded her question sadly. It would most likely kill him to take a break, with Goddard breathing down his neck even from lightyears away, but how he wished it wouldn’t. Olga had always been so caring, so kind. It had pained him to see how little of that care back, especially at the hands of the workers at the orphanage. Sighing, he put down his tools and turned around, ready to indulge the memory of a small child long gone.

But as soon as he turned around, his bittersweet bubble popped, and he was left alone. She had gone, left him all over again, and for once the vicious ghosts were silent as Hilbert broke into sobs for the first and only time on the mission. They could grant him that, judging him but not commenting as he picked himself up to go back to work.

God he had so much work to do.


	2. the whispers scream, but you cannot understand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> eiffel's ghosts stay with him, through thick and thin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter took a little longer than I expected to write! If you can't tell Eiffel is both the character I relate too most and the one I like thinking about more. I wish the sections were a little longer but I wanted to get this out there.
> 
> TW/CW: discussions of alchoholism, discussion of blame in a car accident (I don't know how to phrase this), discussion of kidnapping of/harm to a child (anne), car crashes, descriptions of a panic attack, cryo and its side effects. also of course spoilers for the whole show!
> 
> i do just want to say that none of these chapters are supposed to mimic any real life mental illness when talking about ghosts past panic attacks and maybe ptsd. the ghosts in hilberts chapter were the spirits of the crew and the ones he carried with him, while eiffel's ghosts are the memories of his mistakes (and the crew a little). his are treated more like a mental illness might manifest into, but it is supposed to be a little abstract. also the references to the voices of the crew are based off us hearing the voices of the crew while eiffel is on the uss nightmare. sorry for this ramble, just wanted to get that out of the way!

Eiffel was silent, alone in the comms room. This seemed unusual, usually, he might’ve been loudly lecturing Hera on the intricacies of the Star Wars movies, but Hera had long since been silent. It wasn’t as fun talking to empty air that truly was empty. 

  
So he curls up and into himself, staring out at the flat darkness of space, letting the static feeding of the radio feed and fill his mind. The static isolated him, as his closed eyes seemed to be overwhelmed by a light that did not exist. A crash, a bang, a cry. He unfolds in a panic, looking around to find…. Nothing.

  
He is not in a car, he is not behind the wheel. He is in the USS Hephaestus, lightyears away from the nearest road. His breathing hasn’t calmed down, and neither has his racing heart. But his vision was no longer filled by that blinding light. Instead, he found it filled with salty tears as his sobs grew in intensity. 

  
Taking his face in his hands, he slumped back into the chair, his shoulders shaking as he cried only for them to tense up a second later as he heard the yelling. 

  
“How could you be so goddamn RECKLESS?” came a strained voice, not from crying but from yelling, “You- I thought you had been getting better! You told me you had been getting better! You  _ promised _ , Doug. You fucking PROMISED! And then you go and-”

  
A crackled sob comes over the intercom. The voice had been yelled over the staticky comms channel, breaching his already static-filled ears, whispers of his past coming back to haunt him.

  
“You go- You go and you fucking hurt our  _ daughter _ . You couldn’t have laid off the drinking for  _ once _ , for one single night, could you?”

  
The voice, quieter now and filled with venom, continue. 

“Could you? You wanted what you couldn’t have. What you couldn’t get because you needed to get sober, get  _ better _ . Not kidnap Anne and permanently deafen her. You  _ monster. _ ”

  
The voice continued berating him as his sobs rose in volume. He could barely hear it but at the same time, every word was ingraining itself into his brain, leaving a brand to show the worst mistake he had ever made. As he listened he could swear the voice morphed from Kate’s righteous stone-cold anger to his own voice mocking him. 

“You  _ monster _ , look what you did. You ruined everything. That was your last chance to ever see Anne again and you  _ ruined  _ it. What do you get now? A prison sentence and the lifelong regret of hurting those closest to you.”

It was clear the voice wasn’t going to stop anytime soon, so Eiffel closed his eyes and tried to not wake any of the others with his crying.

\---

When Eiffel woke up he was hazy. The world was still icy, almost crystallized at the edges, as he blinked the frost from his eyes. The shuttle was cramped, barely allowing him to move around in the rare moments he had to get out his repressed stir craziness. He couldn’t walk, he was lightyears out in deep space, but floating around the small room usually worked. 

He hated the quiet. After so many rotations it grew and morphed and seemed to wrap his brain so that it was all he could feel. The cold, the frost, and the never-ending silence of the deep space he was slowly drifting out in. There wasn’t much he could do, except listen to the ghostly crew that was his only company.

They argued and scolded him and it just made him feel worse. He missed them, goddamnit. He missed riling Minkowski up knowing she’d only yell at him 50 percent of the time (he worried about her, him misbehaving was familiar, to both of them), he missed Hilbert’s grouchy sighs during their Decima appointments even though there was tension there now (maybe it had always been there), he missed Lovelace’s… the whole thing, it was harder to pinpoint when she was just so much (how he had used to fear it) and god, Hera. How he missed Hera. It was worse than after Hilbert’s mutiny because at least then he was where she had been. 

Now he was all alone. 

With the whispers of the voices and the creaking of his ship his only companion, he silently ate his rations before gazing at the cryogenic pod blankly. It hurt, god it hurt to go in and get out. He was thinner now, and weak. His eyebrows were almost gone and his beard had disappeared (what he perceived as) a month ago. The few wisps of hair on his head made him look like a balding dad, which he was in a way. 

That thought made him chuckle, a sound he hadn’t heard from himself in so long, and immediately cough. 

It was time to go back to cryo. It couldn’t have been quieter.

\---

Eiffel’s head hurt. Or, was it Doug now? He had been told his name was Eiffel, Doug Eiffel, by the nice lady who had talked to him when he woke up. Reme? Renee? Renee. She was nice. When he had thought he couldn’t breathe because he was panicking so hard, she had helped him breathe and taught him how to deal with it. It had taken a few times of him panicking for him to get it, and even then they happened so much more than he’d expected.

It was like he’d inherited a car, used and bruised that still worked but also stopped malfunctioning occasionally. His body was tired, had scars he couldn’t explain and reactions to things he didn’t understand. He didn’t know why loud noises startled him or he panicked when it was cold. He especially didn’t understand why he panicked so hard his first time in a car.

The ghosts weren’t silent, they were as loud as he was told they had always been, but now he couldn’t understand them. He could feel their emotions, feel the panic that came from them, but he couldn’t understand his words.

He had never been so confused. But he was always like that. And as much as having ghosts he cannot understand hurts, it hurts more to _be_ that ghost.

He is a ghost of his former self, really. That's all he is. He could never live up to the legacy of Eiffel, he is just Doug. No matter how many times they stare and try to comprehend and move on, that fact will remain true.

The life of a ghost in an unintelligible graveyard is a lonely one, and Doug will be damned if he lets it happen to him.


End file.
